I was 7 years old the first time I ever tasted a fig, outside of a Newton, that is. My grandfather was a beekeeper in the Central Valley and he and my grandmother’s modest home sat in the middle of row after dusty row of almond, apricot, and fig trees. My cousins and I would walk through the orchards after swimming in one of the nearby canals and pick fruit off the trees to snack on. My sister and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and canal swimming and fruit snatching weren’t something that were second nature to us. We did our best to emulate our cousins that were at home running barefoot through the trees and taking honeycomb from the hive, but we probably seemed like silly little girl versions of city slickers to them. One particular summer day, after we’d exhausted all of our usual options for mischief, we got into a fruit fight in the orchard. Dashing from tree to tree, we hurled apricots at each other, squealing and dodging the fruit as it landed with dusty thuds at our feet. I distinctly remember drawing my arm back to let another fruit bomb fly when I noticed that the thing I was holding was an odd brownish-green color and shaped like a teardrop. I stopped to stare at the foreign fruit in my hand and promptly got nailed in the belly with a rotting apricot. Undeterred, I held it up and asked “What is this thing?” to my much wiser cousins, who were too busy laughing at the fruit salad all over my shirt to answer me. Eventually I got told it was fig and called a “dingus” for not knowing what a fig was, but I slipped it into my pocket so I could taste it later without any mocking from my cousins, who were still throwing fruit at me. Later that night, I snuck into the bathroom and bit into the fig and was more puzzled than anything. It wasn’t very sweet and it felt a tad slimy and tasted almost like I was eating a leaf or a flower petal. I took one more bite and was rewarded with a pink center full of crunchy seeds. I didn’t really enjoy it, but I didn’t hate it either. I was just more mystified by this alien fruit than anything. How could this thing be what ends up in a Fig Newton? Why would people eat these things? Why had I never seen one before? And then I got bored, chucked it in the trash and went off to find my cousins playing in an old broken down school bus.

While that fig certainly didn’t change my life, I think of that day every time I see figs at the market. There’s something about the wonder of discovering food that makes those memories more indelible than others. So the other day, when my husband came home with a box of figs, given to him by someone at work from their own tree, I fondly remembered the fruit fight in my grandparents orchard and my first fig encounter. After tasting one, I decided that they weren’t as sweet as I would have liked and that I would have to help them along somehow. Since my husband already had the grill going, I sliced a handful in half and threaded them onto a few wood skewers. After a quick look at my “We Olive pantry” (as the shelf that houses my bounty of oil and vinegar is known), I chose the Blood Orange Olive Oil to brush on the cut sides of the fig. I put the fig skewers on the grill cut side down for about 2 minutes until they were caramelized and soft and then flipped them over and let them cook for another 2 minutes. I sliced each half into quarters and popped one in my mouth. The fig was soft and sweet, with a bright orange flavor and a hint of burnt sugar. That night they ended up on some vanilla ice cream with a drizzle of Aged Balsamic. The next day I tossed them with arugula, gorgonzola, and a blood orange vinaigrette. This weekend I am going to serve them just off the grill as a side to pork tenderloin. And each time I make them, I’ll be thinking about running barefoot in the dirt, swimming in canals, and being tormented by my cousins.

Do you have a favorite food memory? Share them with me in the comments section and I’ll re-post your stories!